Baroness Thatcher has cancelled plans to attend the unveiling of Ronald Reagan’s statue on Monday due to growing mental and physical frailty.
She had hoped to be present at the U.S. Independence Day celebrations to honour her political soulmate in London’s Grosvenor Square.
But it has been decided that the 85-year-old former Prime Minister will find it too tiring to sit for an hour in front of the world’s media.
The unveiling of the 10ft bronze will be the third major event she has missed recently, including the Royal Wedding.
Foreign Secretary William Hague and former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are due to attend the ceremony, along with 1,000 fans of the former American President.
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Sources close to the former Prime Minister say she is bitterly disappointed not to be at the event, organised on the centenary of Mr Reagan’s birth by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.
The £500,000 ($800,000) statue’s plinth features one of Mr Reagan’s many quotes – ‘Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction’ – and also a tribute from Lady Thatcher: ‘Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a shot.’
Political friends: Baroness Thatcher's crucial partnership with Mr Reagan, who died in 2004, is seen by many as the reason for the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union (they are pictured in 1985)
Baroness Thatcher, 85, declined an invitation to April’s Royal Wedding and could not attend her 85th birthday party last October because she had flu.
But her crucial partnership with Mr Reagan, who died in 2004, is seen by many as the reason for the fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union.
She called him 'one of the greatest men of our time' and he once told an aide: 'Isn't she marvellous?'.
Around 40 per cent of funds for the statue came from UK private donors.
‘Among conservatives (Baroness Thatcher) is something of an icon, and the fact that she and Reagan were close adds to his lustre'
Robin Berrington, former cultural attaché at London U.S. Embassy
Former U.S. State Secretary Condoleezza Rice will give the keynote address at the ceremony, which is part of a European tour celebrating what would be Mr Reagan's 100th birthday.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Baroness Thatcher’s Scottish Secretary, said Britons were at first concerned about Mr Reagan as the thought he lacked experience.
But he told MSNBC that many were won over by his ‘good judgement, good instincts and guts’ and the British ‘respect his achievements’.
The 10ft bronze monument was sculpted by Chas Fagan, of North Carolina, and will stand near statues to other former presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower.
The ‘special relationship’ at work during the time of Mr Reagan and Baroness Thatcher has since been redefined by President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron to an ‘essential relationship’.
Freedom Square: U.S. Air Force and Army officers serving in Hungary, pose with another new statue of Mr Reagan after a centennial commemoration in Budapest, Hungary, on Wednesday
Robin Berrington, a former cultural attaché at the U.S. Embassy in London, said the level of interest in the ceremony has ‘a lot to do’ with Baroness Thatcher.
‘Among conservatives she's something of an icon, and the fact that she and Reagan were close adds to his lustre,’ he told MSNBC.
It comes after a statue of Mr Reagan was unveiled on Wednesday in Hungary's capital, where he was honoured for his leadership in helping to end communism.
The bronze 7ft likeness of the 40th president was erected in Budapest at Freedom Square, near both the U.S. Embassy and a World War Two memorial.
